The ISU volleyball team made quick work of visiting Texas Tech (25-16, 25-16, 25-18) on Wednesday night at Ames High School.

The 10th-ranked Cyclones (11-3, 4-2 Big 12) controlled the tempo of the match against the Red Raiders (3-13, 1-6) in the sweep, as the Cyclones outshot the Red Raiders, .441 to .200, in the match.

Valuable Experience

Reserves typically don’t get much experience during Big 12 play, but coach Christy Johnson-Lynch called the numbers of Taylor Knuth, Hannah Johnson and Tenisha Matlock to come in to the match.

“Throughout the Big 12 season you don’t have that many opportunities to play some of your subs, but we felt like there were opportunities there to try to get them some playing time,” Johnson-Lynch said. “I think Hannah Johnson and Taylor Knuth, in particular, have been doing really well in practice and we wanted to reward them with that and I thought they did a great job when they were out there.”

Johnson, who had seen action in just three sets all season before being called into the match against Texas Tech, recorded two kills on two attempts with an assisted block.

“It always feels good to get the chance to play,” Johnson said. “I think all our subs did really well. Obviously our starters played awesome, so that gave us a chance to come in. It’s just a good feeling.”

Knuth, who had also seen limited playing time during the season, matched Johnson’s performance of two kills on two attempts — the latter of which came at match point.

Senior Cassie Pratt and true freshman Kristen Hahn also saw playing time as defensive specialists for the cardinal and gold.

Hot, Hot, Henson

It’s something the Cyclone faithful are used to by now.

Senior Victoria Henson led the Cyclones offensively, registering 17 kills while hitting for a .533 clip. Her nine digs was tied for second on the team for the match.

“I think every great team just has a terminator like that,” Johnson-Lynch said of Henson. “Some people think it’s great to be even offensively and spread out the ball but I think you have to have a player who can take over a match and Henson has obviously proven that she is very capable of taking over a match.”

Henson attributes her success to the skills she and her teammates had been working on in practice.

“We’d been working a lot on our back-row passes this past practice [with] not only being effective in the front row but being effective in the back row,” Henson said. “Alison [Landwehr] was putting up good sets, so it was pretty easy.”

Dig it

Senior libero Ashley Mass led the Cyclones with 14 digs, pushing her total to 215 on the season.

Mass set the school record in digs earlier this year in the Cyclones’ four-set victory over Missouri in Columbia, Mo. Her performance tonight pushes her career total even further out, to 1,980.

Iowa State continues its season at 6:30 p.m. Saturday against Kansas in Lawrence, Kan.